He attempted to comfort her, and spoke of God's mercy.
"God?" she exclaimed, passionately. "Yes! if I could speak to him, could implore him, could pray to him! But I cannot, Agenor. Formerly, when a grief oppressed me, a care or sorrow, I took my prayer-book and prayed to the God of my fathers. Now I have no prayer-book--"
"We have the same God, and forms are unimportant."
She shook her head gloomily. "I have said that myself, but it is of no use. How can I explain to you what goes around and around in my poor head? One must have a language to pray in. I have forgotten the old one, and do not know the new. You have taken me into many churches to admire the exquisite paintings and the loftiness of the ceilings, but you never asked how they affected me. I shivered when I stepped into those cool halls out of the sunshine; I shivered through and through. It was so strange, so ghostly, how could I ever learn to pray in a church? Perhaps it would have been easier for me if I had been better instructed in your faith; but I cannot even make the sign of the cross, and if I could, how dare I do it? All I know about the Crucified One is that he was a renegade rabbi, for whose sake all my race, even to the present day, have to endure disgrace and persecution."
Agenor bowed his head, and said nothing. Now he understood that that baptism was not merely a sin against the God of his catechism, but a crime against a young, anxious, thirsting human soul. What could he say? how was he to console her? There was only one thing to which he could exhort her--her duty towards the tiny creature budding under her heart. When he mentioned that, the rigidity left her face, and the tears flowed again.
"Will the child be a pleasure to you?" she asked. "Will it never be a burden?"
When his lips answered for his heart, the effect was what he wished. "I will be strong," she promised. And she kept her word.
The days came again when she smiled and rejoiced in nature. He himself shook off his fear of the world so far as to take short excursions with her--to Brescia, to Lake Garda, and to Verona. In this city, in the Garden of the Franciscans, where they were expected to admire an old stone coffin, the Tomba di Giulietta, they passed the pleasantest hour since that memorable day in Fiesole.
But it was to end sadly enough; for as they were wandering through the gardens containing the sarcophagus, Agenor suddenly started, and insisted on returning to the hotel, even on their departure from the city, urging as a plea that he was not well. But as Judith, a half-hour afterwards, looked on to the street, where her carriage was being made ready, she discovered the reason. A gentleman was speaking to Jan in Polish, who replied very curtly; the same gentleman she had seen, without paying much attention to him, in the garden.
She grew pale, but made no remark; but when, a day or two after, Agenor, observing her moodiness, proposed another excursion, she declined, saying, sarcastically: "It might make you unwell again. Pardon me," she then sobbed, "I know you are not happy, either. You, who are so sought for at home, dare not go out abroad lest your fellow-countrymen should see you and tell that the Jewess is your wife. I will not say that it is a disgrace, such as you regard it, but it is sufficient for me to know you are unhappy for my sake. How miserable that makes me!"